[Poison'd] Question about ship combat escalation

[Anna Kreider]

[lumpley]

Exactly right.

You don't always have the choice to accept the loss at the opening level. If you win the opening roll, for instance, then (barring spending Xs) I have the choice, not you.

And: my pleasure!

-Vincent

[rafial]

Hmmm... I'm confused.  I've only read the rules so far, but it seems like if your intent is to get into cannon range, but NOT broadside or boarding, then if you lose in pursuit, you'll want to accept that loss (keeping pace) and start another round of pursuit.  Of course that'll give everybody involved time to build up more X's, yes?  Seems decent for handling draw out chases.

However I wonder about the situation with PC's chasing NPCs.  Since the NPCs don't build up Xs it's actually to the PC advantage to extend the pursuit...

Also the statement "For your ship escaping another's pursuit, simply reverse these" doesn't seem to work in practice.  For example, I would conceive the first level of evasion being "Your ship escaping, versus the enemy keeping pace" which really doesn't read as any kind of "reversal" of the first stage of pursuit.